A Child Who Walks With Fire
by Aiko Isari
Summary: (ORAS AU) 'To the dragon dancer, I call you from the sea. You failed. Aster, dear child, you cannot fail again.' Perhaps for her mother's sake and for her own, Aster tries to stand up again. With little way home, however, it's only all up from here.
1. Chapter 1

_Warning for death, non-graphic violence, child soldier (implied), troubling unchildlike behavior, disabled character, severe canon divergence. **(EDITED 01/05/17)**_

* * *

 _Chapter One - The Will of the Fae_

Pinks and blues darkened to reds and purples as the sun sank down.

To her, all of the world was red now. Red with flames, red with love and blood and heartbeats. Red tinting the cage of her god, her green, wild god.

No, not her god. Her precious friend, who had howled in her dreams.

She had failed him, and now here she was, sinking in the darkness of the sea, skin nothing but black and red, blood floating over her head.

It had all come to an end.

She wanted to say it was because of human greed, because of technology and desire and the changes of today's world, but those were her mother's rants, not hers. She had only failed due to her weakness, due to her impulsiveness and haste. She had no second chances and would not have deserved any as it was.

She didn't know that death would be so clear, but it was. She closed her eyes. If perhaps, this once, she could meditate, her death would take her before she knew it.

So the Lorekeeper closed her eyes and let the pain wash away, or attempted to. The endless onslaught of pins and needles as salt touched burnt skin failed her for a few seconds, but it faded.

A rainbow light filled her world of darkness. Sharp lines of gold and pink and blue washed and struck, filling her once limp limbs with power. It made their weight all the more apparent, burning and twisting decay into life. The water flowed over the dark skin, pushing it down even as the light lifted it up again.

She sighed and instantly started to cough, unable to spit up or stop the water. Her painless death started to burn a second time.

 _Oh hush. You are alive._

Aster, like a milotic reaching for the sun, burst from the water. She spat and coughed, making to splash back down. Instead she landed on soft cotton down, knowing it by the touch of her fingers (the thing that ached the most). She coughed and retched, unable to open her eyes.

 _I should be dead… it was what I deserved._

The water dripped from her ears, unable to block out the soft voice in her mind. _Don't be such an ungrateful fool. You have much to do, hence why you are alive._

She coughed, barely able to hear the cries of the Pokemon and the person riding them. _Something I need to do… my duties will be passed on to another now…_ Her head was surprisingly clear, perhaps because of the pain. _I have no reason._

 _Are you so willing to give up all you have trained for? Your heritage, your training? This world? You know, surely, who will replace you. There is no one your age who is prepared. Surely, you understand._

She did know. There was no one who can fulfill the duties of the Lorekeeper as an elder and no youth that had been drenched in it. There was only one. The one who had trained her to begin with.

Her mother, too young, too desperate. Her mother, who had not known love for a long time.

Her heart started to throb. If she died then… what was the point of it all? What was the point of everything they had worked for?

 _Yes, there is your reason to continue. Your reason to live. You must, and I will assist you. As one human assisted me. I will return the favor to your kind. Unfortunately, do not misunderstand. This is not a blessing. This is payment, and you too, will have to sacrifice._

She could not nod, and she did not need to. She didn't really understand either.

 _You do not need to now. Enjoy it, your new life._

Aster opened her mouth in a scream as the pain flooded back like the very heat that had struck her in the first place, and passed out.

* * *

When she awoke, it was on a soft bed and to the smell of antiseptic. Aster opened her eyes slowly, wincing at the brightness of the light. She shut them again. Her body still ached. She didn't want to think about it, so she dozed off again.

When she woke again, Aster could move her hands and wiggle her toes. It was a warming feeling, but it didn't get rid of the cold dread in her stomach. Someone had saved her from death.

She touched the bandages that were mysteriously at her waist and throat. Well, it wasn't mysterious. Even Pokemon Centers knew how to take care of humans, if that was where she was. Perhaps it was a regular hospital. It probably was, but Verdanturf was the last hospital that she had been to, for her shots, and that had been only a small clinic. So, she could be wrong. She would have to ask, well, when it mattered.

Aster opened her mouth to make a sound, and all that came out was a ragged sort of hacking noise.

She had no voice, and there was no pen and paper around to communicate with. She probably hadn't been expected to wake for quite some time, if at all. There was a beeping noise above her head, the sound of a functional heart monitor. Aster looked for a window and found it too high to reach. She reached for a belt at her waist that had been tugged off before her falls in the water. There was no pack either, and, now that she looked a bit more carefully (eyes aching with every squint), the remains of her clothes were nowhere in sight. She had left most of it behind when she had jumped on her friend's back, as it would have been extra to carry, and therefore a waste in the end. So now, she was alone. Kind of helpless even. She could still barely see.

When the nurse came in, she had almost gone from drowning in the water to drowning in self-pity under blankets which made every free part of her skin itch, but underneath the bandages of her stomach, it was painful.

"Oh look at you!" The woman fussed. "You shouldn't be trying to move by yourself, you're covered in dragonbreath burns, at the very least, and no amount of heal pulse and floral healing will just wash the effects away you know!"

Aster nodded absently, still staring at herself. Her chocolate brown hair, once short and cut with awkward bathroom scissors, was now ebony (like mother's, you don't look anything like your father now) and buzzed short, skin an ashy gray, scarred and mottled. If she scratched with her nails, she could see the darker skin beneath each ugly patch, likely a patchwork of burn bubbles and popping like grumpig rinds beneath forced restitching of skin.

The Draconid people had always been dark-haired and the color of clay bricks, tattooed by flames and the falls of the meteor. The girl looking out of the bathwater was not a Draconid, or at best, a washout of one. Even the plump of her face had thinned away.

Aster splashed her reflection with a force that made her palms sting. _Don't be so dramatic,_ she told herself. _You died, coming back differently is likely better than not coming back at all._

Aster slowly edged herself out of the tub with the nurses hands, limping the toilet. Her nurse was waiting for her to finish with new clothes and a babbling mouth. A much better way to fill the silence.

"You're very lucky Lisia found you," she heard the woman say and nodded along, not knowing who that could be. They were presumably famous, and related to cotton down. Related in her mind due to the faint recollection of her skin (Aster had always found textures easy to remember.), but the connection just wasn't there. She spoke on and on and when she asked for her name, Aster rubbed her throat to try and speak again. She failed.

The nurse left and got her pen and paper (and wasn't she efficient? Mother had exaggerated a little) and before she knew it, she was able to spell her name with shaky fingers around a pencil. Then, of course, she dropped it.

"Aster," the nurse chirped, and it was almost annoying in how perky it was. "What a beautiful name."

Aster smiled a little, and went back to practicing making a fist. Or at least holding one.

* * *

Two weeks, then three passed like the crawl of a shelmet. She was very lucky that near-death and no identifying paperwork allowed her to be a part of the funds used to care for emergencies. She would still donate it back when she had money. If she could. Theoretically.

Her legs were now back to decent use, ie, being able to walk again, and her throat was mostly healed (She could chew and swallow and spit, but her voice was nowhere to be found), she was able to leave the hospital without nurses panicking over her every twitch. Aster walked out towards the mouth of Meteor Falls and stared out at it for a moment. She couldn't go there. Rough cliffs aside, she had no pokemon to fight with anymore. And in order to complete her task, she would need to get new ones.

Getting one from her old home wasn't an option. Like this, she looked like a thief. A soot covered thief.

Her next best bet was Littleroot, but she had to go through three cities and a good few routes to get there. Plenty of places to get attacked. If she had a trainer license (which Draconids simply did not get for a reason she did not understand, she could just buy a pokeball and go shroomish hunting (she had studied many pokemon in her training and they were a good fighter for early gyms and general survival provided you survived getting one. She was probably better off hunting for a zigzagoon.), but she needed money and patience.

Aster looked up to the sky. Her eyes closed and she opened her hands, raising her arms to the clouds. Then, after a moment of prayer, of reaching beyond reach, as the sky did, she lowered her arms again, wincing at the relief that brought.

She could be wrong, but she might have time.

So. Littleroot. Through multiple routes, the eyes of a gym leader, and a lot of wild pokemon. She had no weapons, no money, no items.

For the first time since coming back from the dead, Aster grinned from ear to ear.

She liked those odds.

As she turned her back on Rustboro, a flower began to rustle beneath a tree.

Of course, still being human and senses not quite as good as before, she did not notice.

* * *

Aster walked carefully, testing her stamina. She ignored any passing trainers as she did, seeing as she couldn't actually fight them. It wasn't a big deal. She would face them when she came back through. That was all. Or at least she would try.

The few times she had visited Petalburg Woods with her father before his passing, she had liked it here. It was cool and a little wet and the pokemon left her be for the most part. It wasn't like she had anything to eat or anything valuable. Well, no, she had the free trail mix Pokemon Centers gave to trainers who were going these short distances, but there was no trainer starter kit all the way out here.

Aster sighed to herself. Her optimism was really just _stifling_ at times. How would other people stand it?

Aster stopped walking and groaned gently aloud. _Now I've gone all the way to thinking to myself,_ she said without making a sound, sitting on a ledge to give herself a quick rest. "I need friends."

Her friends had all been Draconids. Of course, 'friends' was the loosest term that she was going to get out of herself right now. Even thinking about them made her heart beat faster and palms sweat.

After a while of watching wurmple climb trees and silken webs fly about, Aster got up again. She was almost starting to miss the nurses now. They were noisy company

If a pokemon didn't kill her, it was plenty possible that the silence would.

As she moved towards a ledge to climb down, a patch of grass rustled behind her. She stopped like a cornered buneary. They continued to rustle until what looked like a tiny tree stump popped out, floating in the air.

Well, a tiny tree stump with eyes. It blinked its blue flaming irises (would they be irises or pupils?) at her, even in the dark of the trees the white color of its stumpy head shining like a freshly cleaned bone. It almost reminded her of the dragon skeletons harvested for Key Containers. Aster squinted and saw the stubby arms and wisp of a body in the outline of the tree shadows.

She made to make a noise and could not, mouth moving with little more than creaking flesh and bone. It paused, blinking again. Birch type phantump, she realized after a tilt of her head. Made sense for Hoenn, and was probably some type of ironic humor.

Phantump, a typical species of Kalos, were rumored to be spirits of children who had died in the forest, taking up residence inside a tree stump. This was likely just a confused, terrified child who died to the bugs and the spores and the poison of a forest. Like she had almost considered. Yikes.

Aster smiled and knelt, holding out her hand. The phantump stared at her again, this time without blinking. Then it floated over and touched its head against her hand.

Well, close enough.

Then a chill rattled her skin. Energy trickled up, purplish-pink and before her eyes spiraled away from her fingers like vines.

 _This may pose difficulty. It seems as though you left your voice in the hereafter, along with your common sense._

Aster paused and looked about. The phantump jumped away, floating around in a spiral of alarm. That voice from her dreams, from her revival… surely it couldn't be from this small thing?

 _No, I am afraid it is not. I am merely a benefactor. But this child might prove helpful._ The voice vanished and the floating stump let out a squawking noise, frozen in the air. Silence reigned over the forest for a few moments more. Then the phantump spun dizzily until Aster caught them. _Might is the key word there. We never know what the world may offer us._

'Who are you?' She mouthed the words as she thought them, and the frustration at mere sound, hoarse and nonsensical, was enough to make her hiss at the end.

The voice laughed. _Just someone. Now, look after that little one. He needs a friend just as much as you do._

Silence reigned again, barring the strange, ragged whines of the pokemon in her hands.

Well, she had said she needed company.

* * *

 _ **A/N:** _ All right, last one until morning, which is going to be rough. Anyway, I have been thinking this idea about since my first playthrough of the Delta Episode, so I ran with the interesting head canons and thoughts until just how it might work slipped into my head. So, here we are. Please read and review, it's going to be an interesting ride.

Side note: I do kind of take a look at alternate coloring for pokemon. Not necessarily shiny pokemon, but alternate colors. So there you go. Thanks so much guys!

 **Challenges:** Epic Masterclass (Pokemon Game), number 7, story starter challenge, and Mega Prompts quote prompt 37.


	2. Chapter 2

_Warning for corpses, non graphic violence, and implied murder. This might be M as a chapter but I'm not entirely sure since nothing is depicted_

* * *

 _Chapter Two - A Normal Road (For Most People)_

Aster picked herself up from the ground, looking at the creature in front of her. It looked so baffled and confused, hurt even. 'I'm sorry,' she mouthed. She didn't really understand what had happened, but now this creature, likely a child, had been tied to her and her troubles. That was unfair. It was unhelpful. What good would a phantump do her anyway? They weren't combative at first, and this one looked so disoriented and hurt. Maybe it was supposed to appeal to kindness, to a kind nature she was assumed to have.

The creature shook its head. ' _It's not your fault,'_ they said, and for a moment, it was liberating. Someone could practically hear her. ' _I just, it's a bit... weird. I just wanted to prove something to my dad. You know? That I was ready for this. And, well, I guess I wasn't.'_ Their oversized head glowed in the light of the blue pupils and she held it again. There was a faint tickling sensation on the tips of her fingers. _'I don't really remember what happened until now either.'_

Aster pressed her hand to the ground. She could certainly relate to was some kind of post-death amnesia. She slowly pushed herself back up once more, making a face at the time it took. In retrospect, she should have taken a break on something higher, against a tree for example, saved herself some pain. Then again, Draconids were nothing without a high pain tolerance. Which did not explain her issues at the moment.

Was she even a Draconid anymore?

No answer, only puzzled looks from her now psychically bonded phantump child. Child. Like Aster wasn't a child.

 _(Dragon hatchlings aren't children, they are only small adults that will never stop growing until their hearts explode with the flames that wake them.)_

Aster snorted at the voice of her mother in her head earning a quizzical head tilt from her companion. 'Nothing,' she mouthed.

The phantump floated to her hands. ' _You can just think to me, I think.'_ The ghost shook his head. ' _Reading lips is kinda hard now.'_

' _... Oh.'_ In retrospect, that should have been rather obvious. She really wasn't that good at this. _'Sorry about that.'_

 _'It's okay. Well, it's kinda not, but I'm dead, so I don't think i can have a say.'_

 _'Yes, you can.'_ She couldn't stop the words from falling out of her brain. _'Of course you can.'_ The words tumble out even more, too fast. _'What's your name? You have a name, right?'_ Perhaps it was just relief, relief that she had a way to communicate.

… god that was an awful thing to think, wasn't it? She could learn sign language or write or-

 _Not depend on a lingering spirit to keep the isolation from eating my neurons._

 _'Brendan.'_

Aster dropped her train of thought and glanced at her phantump, hers now for real, oh _Arceus_. 'Brendan?'

'My name,' he clarified. "It's Brendan. I was, well… my dad's a gym leader around here."

The closest gym was Petalburg. Or Rustboro. But Roxanne was a prodigy, a trainer school by the book graduate who was as stiff as the dry areas of Meteor Falls. So the new one, the one who had taken over after the Devon Corporation's big breakthrough. She knew one name. Norman. Normal. He was new. He has a wife, has -had- a son. She knew because the kids found out any gossip they could, and he adults didn't want to admit how much they loved to be able to drag the league into the mud, at least in her mother's generation. Aster wasn't sure if she believed any of it. Then again, she had also learned that grass types were hopeless because there was so much that could shred them before they could tank out and destroy the opponent in a battle of attrition. This one had learned to harness psychic power and was already speaking coherent words. So.

She swallowed. It stung more to think about it in that way, now.

 _'Did they find you?'_ They couldn't find her, would never. There was no corpse for her, right? None that can be found. She hoped. Maybe that would give them reason to delay the likely inevitable, maybe if she showed them who she was quickly enough, her mother wouldn't have to do what she would likely try.

Brendan stiffened as much as a tree could. _'I… I don't think so… maybe? It's a bit blurry, still. I couldn't really remember who I was, before.'_

Aster paused as she stretched to crack her back. She was going to have to ponder the implications of that some other time, because that was a terrifying prospect. There were all kinds of disturbing stories about pokemon like that. _'... Do you know where it was?'_

Brendan shook his head, wisps beginning to flow out in rapid puffs. Panic, possibly. Guilt, likely. She didn't know, he had no face creases, no waving hands, not enough body language.

Aster swallowed. She could only guess at how it had happened. Dehydration. Poison. Sucked dry. Spores. All of them painful. All of them slow. No wonder he didn't remember. She looked around, following the pattern of the trees and coming up empty. _'Which way did you float from?'_

Brendan looked around,, sweeping the clearing three times. Then he began to drift away, perhaps on instinct or a tug to go back to what was lost. Aster moved after him in careful steps. She was still tired and no one was in a hurry to see a corpse, right? Surely not. Who would be?

She kept an eye on the trees, noting the change of the leaves and the crisscrossing branches. She winced. _The further I go, the less likely people will hear me._

Not that there were any people to be found in the first place. Petalburg Woods had Bug Catchers in the early morning and then was lunchtime.

 _'Here.'_

Aster stopped, working her throat. Her eyes watered as she sought to see more clearly in the darkness and to talk through the pain. Then a heavy smell, buried with wet leaves and weed killer, made her cough. She managed to muffle it in her sleeve and looked over to the floating phantump. His head was bowed a bit, towards something like a lump. No, she realized, bile rising up in her throat. No, not a lump.

Aster moved forward, looking cautiously about the clearing. There are no vines, no webs. No silcoon or cascoon were scattered about, as often came about from beautifly or dustox. In fact, it seemed the opposite. She had at least heard and seen them outside of this little area. Though, the trees were even thicker here.

 _'Brendan?'_ Her thought caused him to look over, ice blue eyes (pupils?) wide in the gloom. "C-Can you see?" He didn't speak at first, but nodded slowly. She shuddered, bile creeping up her esophagus as the smell reached her. _'What's… what's on the ground?'_

Brendan didn't reply at first. _'Um… s-s-s-'_ Aster exhales softly, enough to shock him.

 _'Never mind,'_ she said quickly, prepared to grab him and run, prepared to apologize and call this self-indulgent idea off. _'That was wrong of me, I should-'_

 _'No!'_ The weight of that emotional shout almost made her ears ring. _'No! No! I'm here! I was here! I was here! I had to be here! I don't remember! I don't remember! But I was here! Look, Aster! Look look loook!'_ His voice, which was a little squeaky and all around okay before, was now coming out like a wailing sob, a deep, heavy noise. _'Look, Aster!'_

 _When did he learn my name?_

She didn't want to look. It wasn't her first time seeing a dead body. She had grown up a Draconid. A Draconid could not be weak and face a dragon, nor tame a dragon. You could not falter. You could not waver. And even then, that still would not always be enough. She had been the best, the youngest to be the best and it had not been enough to preempt disaster.

Still, Aster didn't want to look, not on a fellow child. Not on something gruesomely deformed after all of this time. But the phantump that had once been a human boy was shuddering in place, jittery and whining still. If he kept this up, things might come out and attack them. And he was a young phantump. He couldn't keep her safe and she wouldn't be able to run, not fast enough.

So she moved forward in shuffling steps. As she grew closer, her foot hit two somethings, small and round. She paused and knelt to pick them up. Her fingers closed over something crumbly and grainy and then rough metal. She squinted and then rolled it in her palm. _'Pokeballs…'_

 _'My Pokemon,'_ Brendan whispered. He floated down to hover over one lump. _'I… I think I put them back in their balls. I… I dunno what happened to them, I… I was really cold and it was late and I was trying to get to Petalburg again and-'_

 ** _'Stop!'_** Brendan jumped and so did she. But she quickly recovered. _'D-Don't… not now. You don't have to, I… I need to get your dad… we need to get out of here.'_

 _'But how did it happen? How?'_ He was starting to whine again, the sound too loud and deep. _'I can see myself! I can see me! I'm not hurt, no sting marks or stuff like that! I'm swollen, why am I all puffed up like that? Do you know?'_

Aster staggered a bit because the smell was back and pink light was flushing the area, even stronger than it had been a meter or so away. She couldn't stop the vomit this time because she had never been around the corpses long enough to register.

 _I thought charred flesh would be the worst thing to ever smell. I was wrong, I was wrong-_

 _'Aster?!'_ She lifted her head, the last of her breakfast dropping onto the other side. Brendan floated in her face. 'What is it?'

Aster coughed, holding back what would likely be a dry heave at this point. Her back screamed at her to straighten up, but that would mean looking that full in the face again and she didn't know if she was quite ready or not. _'You… you've been out here for a bit, it looks like. It's just… it's what the body does.'_ It took a few deep breaths through her mouth for her to believe that and summon up the energy to straighten up again.

Brendan shrank back. _'Oh…'_ He floated up again, his small mouth stuck in a triangular frown. He moved towards what may have been bruised sa- fingers, she made herself think, those were _fingers_. _'Oh… My Pokedex is here! So's my PokeNav!'_ The wail was gone now, replaced with that bubbling squeak that seemed somewhat human and also somewhat pokemon, in a strange way. Like a gothitelle. _'We've gotta take this stuff to Petalburg! They'll find me! They'll…'_ The bubbling faded until even the squeak was a whisper. _'They'll know.'_

Aster spat on the ground, tasting the urge to puke again. That was a hazard of Pokemon training, rare but certainly possible. Trainers would just be assumed to be missing, or training. Mostly training. Early trainers would stay out at all hours, determined to be their heroes. They trained for days and days, and the area between cities and towns could be kilometers apart or only a few meters to the left. People wouldn't think much of children who didn't call home from lack of signal for days on end, or determination to be isolated. Even if they missed their schedule, it was likely they just forgot. It took ranger patrols and missing posters for any hope of finding them. And sometimes they never did.

She wondered what her mother's face had looked like. She wasn't sure.

 _'Okay.'_ That meant touching his hands, his bag. Wasn't that a crime? _'I could get in trouble.'_ Well, at least for disturbing evidence.

 _'You won't,'_ Brendan said in a soft, pleading voice now. _'I see… I see scorch marks. And you have no Pokemon or anything, 'cept, cept me now I guess. It'll be weak for the cops. We can do this.'_

 _'We.'_ The word sounded nice, tasted gentle. _'Okay.'_ How could she refuse?

She moved closer and with a low exhale, set to work.

* * *

By the time she got to Petalburg, Aster was limping. Her legs were too swollen. They ached too much. However, as she had been taught, she kept walking. She walked, with the bloody machines under one arm, and two Pokeballs dangling from her free hand. Quite the sight. Brendan floated by her head, everything drooping. If only the stump could move, it would have been better. But it couldn't and he had to pay attention, turning his spectral form one way or another. He had to. Aster was swaying as she walked, stumbling the closer she came to collapsing. All because he had asked her to.

Brendan waved his stubby arms. _'Help!'_ he shrieked, purple-pink psychic power bursting out. Aster winced, but he continued. _'Help! Please!'_

Some people stirred and looked, but more because of her eyes, the items in her hands, and that a ghost existed and was making awful, awful noises, when ghosts were so uncommon for this area.

Then the doors of the Petalburg Gym slid open and out came Norman. His father looked at him like every other pokemon, if with more alarm. At the sight of him, Aster fell forward towards the ground and his father dove to catch her.

Brendan cried and remembered.

 _There is a bright purple light in the gloom of the woods and he follows. He can't stop. Curiosity has overridden the soreness in his leg. And then there's a single yellow eye and a giggle from faraway._

Something happened after that. He's not sure he wants to remember what it is.

* * *

 _ **A/N:**_ Thanks for your support, everyone! It means a lot!


	3. Chapter 3

**_Chapter Three - What is Real?_**

Aster awoke in pain.

It was milder than coming back to life, but just barely. She worked her throat, opening her eyes into slits in the light. She groaned in silence. Her throat didn't respond other than the tingling vibration of air. Then, her eyes fully opened to fluorescence and clean, forced clean and painkillers, for the second time that wasn't of her own free will. Everything ached for a moment.

Then she heard the sound of sniffling. She didn't know ghosts could cry but that would be the only one crying. No one else would be sniffling. Aster made herself turn her head. The phantump looked up at the sound of her rustling sheets. His bright blue eyes glowed in the light of the room.

 _'You're awake!'_ He had no tears, but he looked so full of relief in the cuts of his wood that she couldn't help but smile in greeting.

 _"Hey Brendan."_

He smiled and it would have been watery from a not-grass ghost. _"Hi. I… I got you here. And, um, they… they… they found my body."_

The smile dropped from her face immediately. _"I… oh…"_ She looked away. _"I'm so.. I'm sorry."_ Her brain failed to find anything useful, anything consoling, anything good to say that made sense.

Brendan floated to her hands and instead of closing around fog, she closed around something solid for her fingers to stroke. _"I know. I… I'm glad. If they had never found me… I, I dunno. Dad's outside. I think he called Mom. I… I dunno, but, but-"_ He bobbed a bit. _"My Pokemon are okay! You can… They're in the healing machines right now. They're really scared though. They… they saw, if I heard the nurse right."_ Before Aster could say anything, his tiny form moved to her again. "I want you to take them."

 _"What?"_

Brendan's shimmering eye flames were looking right at her, almost unnervingly so. He looked the most 'okay' that she had seen him. At the very least he wasn't drooping anymore. " _I want you to take them. I'll help you train them, them and so many others. This is my dream, Aster, well, it was. I…"_ He leaned to press against her nose. _"I want to beat my dad. I want to get farther than he ever did. And like this, I can't. But you can now."_ Aster blinked at him. He looked down. _"I'm sorry, I bet you have important things to do, but I bet if we get you strong enough to take on the league, you can do that too."_

Aster was still processing this, but she managed to get enough coherence to point at her throat.

Brendan perked and waved his stub hands. _"That's what I'm here for! I'll be your voice! And… and we'll find other ways! We'll be a team! Please! Will you help me?"_

Aster swallowed again. There was no reason not to was there? This benefited her in more ways than one. But was it right? He seemed to think it was, so maybe that would have to be enough. She nodded, trying to avoid the sensation of bile rising in her throat.

Brendan brightened, the flame pupils he had for eyes growing big and bright. _"Thank you, Aster! Don't worry, I'll help you! I'm sure you can train my Pokemon too! Actually, dad found my other Pokemon! I hadn't had time to train with all of them. Look!_ " He pointed and Aster made her head turn as she sat up. She blinked in baffled surprise. Four Pokeballs sat on the desk, clean and dry. _"Dad said two were broken, so maybe they escaped or, or something else. But these guys are okay. So please train them!"_

Aster nodded and then paused to take the whole thing into consideration. She didn't feel like she had much energy to do anything, let alone train. Before she could even mentally point that out to Brendan (who would probably go on for a good few minutes, he seemed to like to babble), there was a knock at the door.

 _"It's Dad!"_ Brendan floated to the door and prodded it with a hand and a psychic push. It opened to reveal the familiar short hair cut and narrowed, sober eyes of photos and rickety television sets. Her mother had constantly derided and mocked gym leaders and the league. Aster could see her mother pacing in her mind's eye, cape billowing, red eyes ablaze with the light of the torches.

" _They stray from the natural path, Aster. It's why so few use Mega Evolution. So few have that connection anymore!" She stopped a minute, observing her daughter's sweaty slick palms tight on the book. "There's nothing connecting them to the land, sea, and sky. Everything has to be explained! It has to be answered!" She spread her arms grand and dramatic, waiting for Aster's eyes to go wide._

" _They've taken the wonder away from the world!"_

Aster remembered squealing in delight and fear, fear for the universe, delight at the fanged grin that had overtaken her mother's face just from seeing her eyes. She looked at Norman, settling back on her sore elbows and regretting it with a low, silent hiss.

He waved a pale hand. "Relax. You don't need to get up."

 _Hadn't been really planning on it._ Aster watched his tense arms, sinewy muscle clear in each movement. She sat back, Brendan floating back over and perching himself by her stomach. She could almost see it, a kid with his legs swinging over the bed, eager to hear what his father had to say. What did the boy look like before? She hadn't been able to see.

"Do you mind if I sit?" When Aster shook her head, Norman settled into a nearby chair. The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes, while Brendan fidgeted. Finally, Norman released a loud sigh. "At the moment, I am not certain if I want to thank you or condemn you. For… for finding my son." Aster blinked at him and slowly her fingers curled on top of the phantump's head. The boy had gone stiff. "I contacted the Rustboro Pokemon Center, and they said you had been there for the past month. If it weren't for their files, and the state of the body as it was found, I would have wondered if you had something to do with it. That said, I must ask if you could tell me, before the police do," He leaned to look her right in the eyes. Her unblinking stare did not unnerve him. That usually worked on adults. "How did you find him?"

Aster stared back, Then, she looked away, reaching for the Pokedex. Brendan was staring at them and didn't even squeak when she picked him up. She placed the Pokedex near him, wincing in slight pain. Brendan, without really thinking about it, turned on the device and held up the identification screen.

Silence reigned once more. Then, Norman fell back into his chair and a strangled noise left his mouth.

"Son?"

The little phantump nodded.

Aster rolled herself to hide her head under the pillow, if only to pretend at giving them privacy. She needed more sleep anyway.

* * *

Professor Oak of Kanto, when creating the first Pokedex, had done it through word of mouth and personal observation. Those were the tales that often appeared in the basic flavor text that everyone took for granted. It was the method of choice as other professors took their mantles and more data was required, even as more and more got confirmed and denied and analyzed. Stories like 'the cubone takes the skull of its mother' or 'Drifloon carry children away from their parents' were just that for the most part, stories.

Until now.

Birch was not sure how to feel about that. Norman had called him, hours after they had found the body, and it had taken even longer to answer it because he lacked a Pokegear or a regular phone like most researchers. They were a bit of a health hazard. But Norman had called him anyway, voice barely shaking from tears.

The Norman he had always known was solid, steady, unbending. It had gotten him into trouble many times before. So if he believed his son was a phantump, Birch was inclined to want to agree with him, even if the only proof was of the ability to use the latest Pokedex model and pull up the trainer identification.

The part of him that remembered long hours of university ecology classes and debates on the merits of multiple observations thought differently. Phantump were not a species that typically dwelled in Hoenn. They preferred the more moderate temperatures of Kalos over his home region's tropical heat. So that they were here meant changes in the ecosystem, but if there was only one-

Birch scratched at the tufts of his beard. No, this wasn't something he couldn't decide by himself. He began to head towards his dusty computer. Oak and Juniper would have more knowledge about this, he would gather. Or at least more of a hypothesis. He wanted something, anything like a theory, before they began anything solid like an investigation. Even more legends would do, and if they could get data on Brendan -the phantump- himself, that would-

There was a knock at the door of the lab and even from this back area, Bitch's ears caught the echo. "It's open!"

There was a loud creak and then rapid, soft sneaker-wearing footsteps."Dad!" Birch turned from the computer to let it boot. He smiled, a perfect mirror of his daughter's own, but his was less exuberant, he realized a little too late. "I'm back!"

Right when she got close enough, his thick arms moved and he pulled her close. "Welcome back May." He paused a moment for her to hug him in return. "Catch a lot of good pokemon?"

She shifted to adjust, like always. She was already getting taller. "Yeah. But there's some weird stuff happening around Route 105, with that tunnel, so they said it was best to leave well enough alone. So I figured I should come back here and see if I missed anything and get my next assignment." She laughed. "It's really tough to look around without the phones anymore." She laughed again and this one sounded a little forced. It was the discomfort of confusion, he realized quickly, not from awareness. Her hug was too loose, too puzzled to know the meaning behind his.

Too many minutes passed of him not letting go. "Dad?"

He kept his eyes closed. He didn't speak. May leaned back a little, her blue eyes big and solemn and older than they should be, as most trainers got to become. She pulled away and he let go, much as his arms and his heart protested.

She gave him a frown now, deep and wrinkled. "What happened, Dad?"

Birch swallowed and his eyes flickered to the picture frames left on the desk. "Brendan's dead."

That much was certain.

* * *

Norman turned the Pokedex and PokeNav over in his hands as he walked through the center that Saturday morning. He peered about the empty lobby. Well, mostly empty. The morning nurse was typing away, coffee steaming from her cup as she worked on inventory. He exhaled softly, which was enough to attract the woman's attention. She smiled.

"Good morning, sir," she said with a smile. "You're up early, as always!" She turned from the computer with a swivel of her chair. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

He had to admire her professionalism. There was his son's dead body in a freezing area of her building, as very few cities had funeral parlors, who she had likely seen, if not known about. It wouldn't be the first dead body she had looked at in her life he gathered, but still. He appreciated it, nevertheless.

"There is, thank you," he said as he put the devices on the counter. "I need to change the identification for these."

The nurse smiled and reached into the drawer for a few cords. "Do you want to delete the data already on them?"

"No, but thank you." His son needed a legacy of some kind, even if someone else was carrying it.

"Okay then." She connected the Pokedex and set to work. "I'm going to need the fingerprint of the new user, if you could."*

Norman heard the squeaking noises of a phantump as it passed through the door. "That will only take a moment."

Surely, that would be what he would want.


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter Four - What Makes a Trainer_

Aster looked at the first Pokeball in her hand and gave a sigh. Then, she looked at Brendan. His hands were pumped up like eager fists.

 _'Go on, Aster!'_ He bobbed up and down. _'We've transferred everything over to be in your name now! They won't attack you now! I'm sure of it!'_

 _'You don't know that,'_ she said, making a face like the twisting of a too-tight knot.

Brendan made a face of exasperation, mouth in an angular frown against his eye holes. _'Ace is my starter,'_ he said with a pout. _'I think I would know if he would hurt you. He didn't hurt me.'_

Aster wanted to point out the pokeball technology was keyed to make it so pokemon didn't attack their first trainer. It was why traded pokemon tended to grow faster and disobey sooner. Unconscious pack dominance attempts, or something. There was no reason why this one wouldn't attack her now. She shook her head in self-derision. _What kind of Draconid am I, afraid of a starter, barely trained? I've trained noibat until their wings broke heavy branches._ Ignoring the sudden lump in her throat, she tossed the Pokeball up and then, with a reckless bit her mother would love, unclipped the rest for good measure.

Brendan let out an 'eep' of surprise. _'Who knew you were so easy to rile up?'_

Aster scoffed with annoyance as the balls popped open. She was a _dragon_ , she had some pride.

The pokeballs popped open, revealing four different shapes. Aster quickly scanned them all and saw a torchic, a surskit, a poochyena and…

 _'You caught a ralts?'_ Said ralts twitched visibly. Oops. Poor thing. She was tempted to ask _how,_ because ralts tended to avoid Draconids like the plague (the smell of dragonsblood and the sound of their thoughts, apparently.) as well as most early trainers. They were just too noisy.

Brendan made a rubbing motion with a hand. _'Ehe, yeah. It took a few hours… I helped someone catch one and well, I wanted one too, I guess.'_ The ralts' pink horns began to glow a paler shade and he waddled closer to Brendan. Brendan immediately floated back. _'No! Bad Kiyo! I'm not your trainer anymore.'_ The ralts stepped back and this caused the other pokemon to turn from where they had been staring at Aster. Brendan waved his arms and prepared to speak more and then Aster coughed. He turned to her, still pouting. She kind of admired their loyalty actually, though it was going to be a little tough to deal with if they didn't pay her much heed at all. It was almost tempting to just catch new ones entirely.

 _'You need to talk to them like a pokemon,'_ she said, after thinking about it for a moment.

Brendan blinked. _'Oh… right.'_ Two of his pokemon were immune or barely affected by psychic and the third would just be hurt by it, more than likely. How did non-offensive psychic work on pokemon weak to it? There had to be some science around it. All she knew was that the Lati twins were some of the first to pass down the ability, or something. Were they even psychic types? There was Lugia but that wasn't a dragon... oh this was too much thinking. She watched Brendan for a moment instead as he tried to remember just how to talk like a pokemon. Had that forced insertion of psychic made him forget or something?

Aster looked away, making to walk along the beach for a few minutes. The nurse had told her that was the best way to recover, move in little sequences. She looked at her Pokedex as she walked, scanning entries and moves. _The poochyena has a rare egg move… huh._ She wasn't sure how much good that would do if they were this young. She had vivid memories of nearly losing a finger to a baby bagon's dragon tail. It hadn't even been her bagon either.

Aster looked back at them. Well, at least the pokemon looked all right from here, none heading to bolt back to their homes despite the pokeball code that pointed out that wasn't a good idea. The torchic, Ace, she thought she was, was bouncing from one talon to another, a trait of growing torchic if she remembered right. They were always to be training their leg muscles, so they were preparing for double kick and to make themselves feel better about not being able to fly.

The other pokemon were in similar motion, barring the ralts, who seemed to be swaying to the auras of the air? Or was just swaying. The poochyena nibbled on a fallen stick, its eyes the only ones still intent on the phantump. Only…

Aster made herself dash, wincing in pain, just before the poochyena lunged with smoking teeth. She caught Brendan in her arms and crashed to the ground. It _hurt_ , but this time it was just on the edge of bearable, so she made herself get up. Brendan squeaked and glared at the poochyena, opening his mouth to speak-

But Aster was faster. She gave a yank on the pup's collar and pulled them towards Brendan. Then, she pulled it to her. Seeing its wide golden eyes, she did not waver. Aster held up Brendan, then shook her head no. Then she did it a second time. Following that, gently, she put them back on the sand. Brendan floated, baffled. Aster took one step back, then two.

She waited.

The poochyena sniffed, moving forward. Brendan shifted back in the air, flames going wide and a little wild. Poochyena sniffed again, jaw tight. Then, they sat back on their haunches and yawned.

Brendan visibly sagged in relief and confusion and Aster moved herself into a sitting position, kneeling to scratch behind the ears. She mouthed her praise until the dog's ears fell back and their tongue lolled out of their mouth with contentment.

Only then did her shoulders relax. Aster grimaced with relief. _Good thing there are a lot of canine pokemon…_ She exhaled with a heavy sigh. Dragons and canine types had a similar sort of thought process, though lillipup and poochyena were infinitely more domesticated due to them living so close to settlements. Still, the thought was there. _You_ led, not them. She lifted her head to check on the other three pokemon. They were all staring at her. Then Ace came over and rubbed her head against Aster's arm. Like all torchic, the warmth spread from her wrist throughout her whole body. It soothed the aches in her elbows and thighs. She sighed, almost tempted to loll her tongue out herself. But she resisted. That would be just plain weird.

 _'You okay?'_ She looked at Brendan, freeing a hand to pat the torchic. He nodded slowly, shivering and staring at his old puppy with fear.

 _'Kinda… what was that about?'_ He floated to pat his old poochyena, earning a bark. Brendan hesitated before patting her back. _'Mick's never done that before.'_

Aster sat up, carefully picking up Ace and setting her in her lap. She earned a peppy chirp. The surskit, seeing the problem was dealt with, began skating on the sand, eventually moving to the water. Aster watched her skate with a small pit in her stomach and a little green at the gills. Somehow, she wasn't really looking forward to taking a ride anywhere near the water anytime soon. She closed her eyes, trying to explain. _'I… I guess she just sees you as another pokemon now. Or something like it. Someone that was a threat to her place. So I showed her you weren't.'_ Maybe. Dogs were very strange.

 _'But she never did that to anyone else!'_

Aster glanced at him. _I'm really handling this too well._ 'You sure?' Brendan nodded and she frowned, continuing to scratch. _'Then she was testing me too.'_

Which the puppy probably was, but it was more of a possibility that she saw Brendan as the current threat. It may not have manifested so violently because she had crashlanded like a ducklett, but that didn't mean the whole thing was just over like that. There was work to be done, progress to be made.

For some reason Aster found herself starting to smile. Pokemon training. That was nothing new. She could do that. Even with some baby pokes, especially with some baby pokes. It had been a while.

Brendan peered over at her. _'You look like you're really happy, Aster.'_

Aster blinked and looked at him. She smiled all the wider. _'Yeah, I am, a bit.'_ She moved to stand and whistled with two fingers. When the sound came out, she nodded to herself. The four pokemon, five if you counted Brendan and she probably had to, crowded around her shoes. She grimaced. Now this was going to be hard. At the moment, the pokemon would need help understanding her until she had her voice back, if she ever did get it back. Brendan's psychic didn't work so well on other pokemon and she couldn't just depend on that. Then she pulled out the pokedex. She needed to see their moves again anyway… wait.

She held out the pokedex to Brendan, pointing at the moves on screen. She gestured to her feet and hands. She stomped once with her left foot, then twice. Then she repeated the gesture with her right foot.

Brendan thought about it, then he nodded. He thought he understood. The best way to do it with these pokemon for now was sound and gesture. Then Aster offered her palm to the tiny ralts. Kiyo placed his hand to her fingers and his horns began to glow, almost illuminating the helmet with its brilliance. A rush of color washed over her vision, blinding her for the briefest moment. When she shook it away, the little creature made a tittering sound. Oh so that was why this one got caught. Sassy little bastard.

She nodded to herself, grinning a little wider. _'All right,'_ she told Brendan. _'Show me what you used to do.'_

Brendan perked up and nodded.

* * *

A couple of hours later, Aster returned each pokemon to its ball and sagged to the ground. _And I thought keeping bagon from jumping off of the highest falls was difficult._ Brendan floated down to her chest and patted her forehead in praise. It was one of the most pokemon gestures he had done yet. Maybe he'd forget being a human and just be a really smart phantump.

"Not bad for a first session."

Brendan floated up from his spot and waved excitedly at the approaching Norman. His flames sparkled.

Aster however, nearly jumped up off of the sand and regretted it, grimacing in pain.

Norman's expression changed to a forced smile and he waved back. Aster made herself stand, just in time to catch a small, red and gold tin. "Pyroar balm," he explained at her quizzical head tilt. "For your muscles. According to your file, everything in your body was stiff, and you walked from Rustboro to Petalburg in a relatively short time. Your body needs to relax and build itself back up."

Aster raised an eyebrow. Usually, her mother would dunk her in a Lavaridge Hot Spring to dispel her tension but… She wasn't around. It was starting to make Aster a little queasy. She bowed her head in thanks and set to work on her arms and shins. Norman watched as she shuddered and fell back onto her bottom into the sand. Brendan floated worriedly after her.

 _'You okay?'_

"It's hot," she mouthed, making a garbled groaning sound. Then she blinked in surprise. Noise.

"Oh so you can make noise." Norman mused. "Good. Now we have a chance that someone will hear you." He handed her a water battle, which she took gratefully. "Your name is Aster, correct?" She nodded again. "The Rustboro Center almost treated you as a Jane Doe, so wherever you came from must have been a rough ride. What are you going to do?"

 _Why do you care?_ Aster looked out at the water. Right now, her home was probably hunting down ways to connect with Rayquaza again. Her mother was likely searching for anything she could do to delay the things to come, if not stop them entirely. But that was her job. If she stayed around here with these little guys, she couldn't do that. And if she stayed here, Brendan's dream would stagnate.

(" _Don't be ridiculous. You're alive, are you not?"_ )

She couldn't help but smile again and pointed towards the route to the woods.

Norman laughed. "Onward, then?" At her tilt of the head, he sighed. "Well, I can't say I can stop you. That is exactly what I would do. However!" He stood up and held out a pokeball. "I refuse to let you leave without proving your competency. "I will train you here, and then you will earn your way out of here. Understood?"

Brendan squeaked. _"You get to learn from_ dad, _awesome!"_

Aster, however, shivered. This was going to be a long mess, wasn't it? She was going to need more pyroar balm.


End file.
